nrcg..do you know how to do a screen capture, or bring over what Klass posted as the 'wet' capture to here? i hope i make sense.

What are you wanting captured and posted here?

hey Klass..it was http://www.myspace.com/402470771but now when i go into it (the myspace) i can't get the mood to show up. i don't know if its my computer or what? its always 'done but with errors on page' ugg.

Investigators now hope hunters may find new evidence as the search for 11-year-old Lindsey Baum enters its fifth month this week.

Grays Harbor Undersheriff Rick Scott said local hunters start combing through the woods this time of year, stalking in remote areas that may have been missed in the search for the missing McCleary girl.

“Be looking for more than just deer,” he said.

Hundreds of deputies, officials and volunteers scoured rural areas around McCleary in the days after Lindsey disappeared, but authorities hope hunters wandering deep into the woods may stumble upon new evidence.

“If they see anything suspicious — call us,” he said.

Lindsey disappeared June 26 while walking a short distance along a residential street from her friend’s house to her home. Despite hundreds of tips and dozens of searches, investigators have found no evidence to explain her disappearance.

The brown-haired 4-foot-9 girl was wearing a light blue hooded shirt and blue jeans when she went missing. Authorities believe she is the victim of an abduction.

Scott said privately organized volunteer searches have continued on recent weekends throughout the past couple months.

Those searches have been well attended, he said, but they have unfortunately not produced any significant information for investigators.

Scott said a short segment on Lindsey included on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” provided some national exposure, but investigators did not see any increase in tips.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is still working with the Sheriff’s Office on the case, he said. Investigators have hundreds of tips to pursue.

“We’re continuing to follow up,” he said.

Anyone who might have any information about the whereabouts of Lindsey Baum should call 1-866-915-8299 or via e-mail soadmin@co.grays-harbor.wa.us. Information may also be mailed to PO Box 305 McCleary, 98557.

After four months, authorities have little evidence in Lindsey Baum case

MCCLEARY 11/01/09 - Police Chief George Crumb said he used to look out his office window from the police station on Summit Road and see Lindsey Baum walking with her regular group of friends.

“She was pretty much a daily fixture of the area,” Crumb said of Lindsey, who was 10 when she went missing not two blocks from the police station as she walked to her home from a friend’s June 26. “She seemed to be, you could even say, the leader of the little group.”

Before she disappeared, Crumb thought nothing of noticing Lindsey - in this small town of about 1,500, all the locals know the neighborhood children by name.

“It wasn’t unusual to see her along with everything else,” Crumb said.

As summer has turned to fall, more than four months have passed with no sign of what happened to Lindsey. Residents say the girl’s absence, and the fear of what might have happened to her, have the entire town hurting.

“I totally think it’s affected the whole town,” Diana Hasbrouck, co-owner of Rain Country Restaurant, said between serving customers Wednesday, standing with a half-full pot of coffee in one hand. “See the streets right now?” she added, gesturing toward the empty sidewalks outside the restaurant. “That’s the way it’s been all summer.”

McCleary no longer is a town where people leave their doors unlocked, said Willa Smith-Creamer, a cook at the restaurant.

“People are more apt to keep their kids inside now,” said Smith-Creamer, 33, a lifelong McCleary resident. “I used to leave my doors unlocked all the time, and now I don’t.”

The weekend of Lindsey’s disappearance, the McCleary Police Department’s four-officer force gave way to detectives with the Grays Harbor County Sheriff’s Office who are now in charge of the investigation, supplemented by FBI agents from Seattle.

The investigation has been thwarted at every turn by a lack of physical evidence and no clues about how Lindsey disappeared.

Lindsey vanished after leaving a friend’s home on Maple Street by herself shortly before 9:15 p.m. to make the half-mile walk across town to the home she shared with her mother, Melissa, and 12-year-old brother, Josh, on Mommsen Road.

The last confirmed sighting of Lindsey was about 9:15 p.m., when a resident driving through town saw her walking on Maple Street between Fifth and Sixth streets – about the halfway point of her journey home.

At first, investigators explored the possibility that Lindsey had run away from home or that she might have been hiding in the woods after a dispute with her brother over a bicycle. That possibility soon was ruled out.

“Certainly, someone facilitated her disappearance,” Grays Harbor County Undersheriff Rick Scott said during an interview in his office in Montesano, about 18 miles west of McCleary. “We believe that she was taken. We believe her to be the victim of foul play.”

MANY TIPS, FEW CLUES

Scott said investigators have slogged through thousands of leads and tips. There have been eight to 12 “persons of interest” at various points during the investigation, but none panned out, he said.

And the tips keep coming. Chief Crumb stood in the reception area at the McCleary police station Wednesday. He was the only one there to answer the phone, and he jotted down information from a tipster as he cradled the phone between his shoulder and head.

“Well, there’s been no suspects; there’s been people of interest,” he told the caller.

Crumb said any tip the department gets about Lindsey’s disappearance is forwarded immediately to Grays Harbor County Detective Polly Davin, who is assigned full time to the case.

Tips come in all the time, Crumb said, but many are vague or of little to no evidentiary value. For example, Crumb said, someone walking in the woods notified police after discovering a shoe, thinking it might have been Lindsey’s. It turned out to be the wrong size and appeared to have “been out there forever,” Crumb said.

AMATEUR SLEUTHS

Crumb and Scott said the case has drawn a number of amateur sleuths who haven’t necessarily been helpful. Crumb said that over the summer, someone went to the McCleary assessor’s office, got the names and addresses of everyone who lives on Maple Street, and posted that information on a message board devoted to Lindsey’s case, leaving the impression that any of those residents could have been responsible.

Crumb said that although posting such information online is legal, “it’s inappropriate.”

“I wish they’d tone that down,” he added.

Scott said some who have posted information about Lindsey’s case on the Internet have created “suspects du jour” who have had “nothing to do with anything,” he said.

“I think there’s a fine line between wanting to help and being irresponsible, and some people have crossed that line in making speculations and opinions that become accusatory.”

Calls also have come from residents who suggest someone they know could be responsible, Crumb said. Many of these calls seem to have more to do with an individual’s personal issues with someone than evidence connected to Lindsey’s disappearance, he said.

“We’ve had a lot of calls like that, unfortunately,” he said.

Crumb recalls that when he moved to McCleary in 1994 to take the police chief job, his daughter would ride her bike around town when she was about Lindsey’s age.

“We don’t have as many kids walking around as in the past. It’s on everybody’s mind,” he said.

Things won’t get back to normal in McCleary until the case is solved, Crumb said. But he fears it might remain unsolved until after he retires.

“It’s not going to go away,” he said.

MASSIVE SEARCH

In July and August, law enforcement officers and volunteers “tipped McCleary upside down” in a massive search for Lindsey, Scott said. The search included helicopters, fixed-wing aircraft from the State Patrol and search-and rescue-dogs from throughout the Puget Sound area, he said.

“I would find it hard to believe that you could find a piece of ground in McCleary that didn’t have one of their footprints,” Scott said.

Detective Davin said that during the first few weeks of the investigation, between 40 and 50 law enforcement officers were working on the case, including FBI agents.

Police spoke to every resident and searched inside and outside more than 150 homes on or near Maple Street, Scott said.

Detectives have reviewed records of people who used credit cards at downtown businesses during the period in which investigators think Lindsey disappeared, such as the Shell Station on Summit Road, Scott said. They even got a list of cell phones whose signals bounced off McCleary’s lone cell phone tower the evening of June 26, he said.

Linda Cunningham, the owner of McCleary Video on Simpson Avenue, said FBI agents have interviewed her three times about Lindsey’s visit to the store with friends an hour or so before she disappeared.

“They (investigators) talked to everybody in town,” she said. “They looked through everybody’s house at least twice.”

Cunningham said her store used to be filled with children renting DVDs and video games after school. However, “as soon as Lindsey got kidnapped, parents stopped letting their kids go around,” she said. “It’s hurting businesses, too. I don’t blame the parents.”

Cunningham added, “I feel so bad, but there are times I just want it to end. I like to think she will just come home. We just want her to come home and try to be a normal town again.”

HOLDING OUT HOPE

Lindsey’s mother, Melissa, answered the door with a cough at her Mommsen Road home Wednesday. Her son, Josh, a seventh-grader at McCleary Elementary School, was home sick with the flu. Lindsey’s German shepherd, Kadence, poked her nose through the door and Melissa Baum came outside for an interview.

She is steadfast in her belief that Lindsey is alive and will be returned home safe.

“I know my daughter’s going to be found,” she said. “I’m frustrated. It’s been four months and two days.”

Everyone in McCleary who has ever come across Lindsey – Chief Crumb, Cunningham, Kara Kampen (whose Maple Street home Lindsey was visiting June 26 to play with her friend Michaela) describe Lindsey as sharp, precocious for her age and talkative.

Lindsey had left her cell phone charging at home the evening she went missing.

When police viewed Lindsey’s MySpace page after her disappearance, they learned only that she had an affinity for the popular movie “Twilight,” a story of vampires set in Forks. A forensic search of her computer showed she had had no Internet communications with anyone whom she might have met without telling her mother, police said.

Police did not issue an Amber Alert after Melissa reported her daughter missing at 10:50 p.m.; Melissa Baum says they should have done so. But Crumb and Scott have said that police do not have authority to issue an Amber Alert unless they know a child has been taken and they have concrete information to issue to the public – such as a car or suspect description – that can aid in a child’s recovery.

“We didn’t have that,” Scott said.

There is talk among law enforcement officers in Washington of changing the requirements for Amber Alerts so they can be issued in cases such as Lindsey’s, Scott said.

“I don’t disagree with Melissa that there’s some frustration in the whole Amber Alert thing,” he said.

Crumb noted that the vast majority of missing-child cases involve simple misunderstandings – a child forgot to tell a parent about sleeping over at a friend’s or left home after a dispute.

Melissa Baum said it’s difficult to see Lindsey’s old playmates around town. Lindsey’s dog Kadence only recently began gaining weight after refusing to eat anything for two weeks after Lindsey disappeared, she added.

Melissa Baum said yellow police tape blocks her family from entering Lindsey’s room because investigators want to preserve her scent for search dogs, which already have scoured the wooded areas around McCleary. Scott added that investigators want to keep Lindsey’s room untouched because there might be items in Lindsey’s room that later will become evidence, or that can be used to collect a DNA sample belonging to Lindsey.

Melissa Baum now is in charge of the volunteer searches in and around McCleary every weekend. Searchers took Halloween weekend off; three weekends ago, the search team included more than 70 soldiers from Fort Lewis who scoured the wooded areas around McCleary, she said.

Crumb said that even though the searches have covered a lot of ground, the vastness of the forests and swampland around McCleary makes it impossible to say definitively that searchers have checked every place where Lindsey could be.

McCleary’s location near several highways increases the number of locations where an abductor could have taken her, Scott said. The roads out of McCleary include state Route 8, which leads to U.S. Highway 101 and Interstate 5; and state Route 108, which leads past Little Creek Casino toward Shelton.

Melissa Baum said she knows investigators are doing all they can but is frustrated by the lack of progress.

“I just feel like it’s taking too long,” she said. “I don’t know what I expect them to do that they’re not doing.”

Melissa Baum said she had a run-in in July with the most publicized of the “persons of interest” in Lindsey’s disappearance, a man in his early 20s who worked at a retirement home on the street where Lindsey last was seen.

Melissa Baum said the man followed her in a vehicle as she drove on Maple Street. She called police, and officers pulled the car over, court papers state.

The man said he thought Melissa Baum’s car was suspicious, “so he followed it around, thinking it might be connected with Baum’s disappearance,” the search warrant affidavit states.

Melissa Baum said of the episode, “I don’t trust anybody anymore.”

Scott said enough residents had notified police of the man’s odd behavior to spur investigators to obtain a search warrant for his and his family’s properties in McCleary on Oct. 2.

According to the search warrant affidavit, the man told conflicting stories about his whereabouts the night of Lindsey’s disappearance. He first told police he was working at the retirement home, but his former supervisor there said he was suspended the night of June 26.

He was a suspect in an attempted rape of a child in McCleary in 2000, the affidavit states, and he told a friend after Lindsey’s disappearance that “he could not believe that a girl had been taken and cut up and dismembered.” The friend told police that he “was obsessively talking about Baum and what had happened to her; specifically, that he believed she had been kidnapped and murdered.”

Nothing of evidentiary value was found during the search, although Scott is reluctant to say that the man – or anyone else – has been cleared in Lindsey’s disappearance. A Seattle TV station’s helicopter taped the police search of the property and aired it on local newscasts, but Scott said the man is only one of the eight to 12 people who have been investigated as “persons of interest” at one time or another during the investigation.

“I’m reluctant to say that anybody is 100 percent cleared because I don’t have any evidence,” Scott said.

The man whose property was searched has said his family will sue the sheriff’s office.

FALSE SIGHTINGS

Law enforcement officers also have had to contend with false sightings of Lindsey, Scott said. Early in the investigation, one of Melissa Baum’s family members called to report that she thought Lindsey was in the back of a car headed west on state Route 8, he said.

Police assumed it was a legitimate sighting because it was reported by someone who knows what Lindsey looks like, he said.

“Multiple units from multiple agencies set up to converge on the vehicle,” Scott said. “I’ve got guys doing 100 miles per hour, setting up to intercept this car.”

It turned out that the woman didn’t actually see Lindsey; she had information from a psychic that Lindsey was in the back of a car that looked like a vehicle she later spotted on the highway, he said.

Scott said the example illustrates not only the family’s desperate search, but also how police have to respond rapidly to every tip, because they never know which one will be the break that leads to finding Lindsey.

National media attention focused on Lindsey’s disappearance has helped get her picture out across the country, Scott said. Her disappearance has been covered by three national news networks, as well as “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” “America’s Most Wanted” and “Nancy Grace,” he said.

However, national attention also has led “to false sightings all over,” Scott said.

“It’s problematic because you take a lot of resources to deal with that,” he said.

The case of missing McCleary girl Lindsey Baum received some more national exposure today.

People magazine put Lindsey’s face on its cover along with five other young people in an effort to highlight people who vanish without a trace and the hope their families have for finding them.

Baum vanished 10 days before her 11th birthday while walking a few blocks from her home, on June 26.

Deputies have received hundreds of tips, but have not found any solid leads, Undersheriff Rick Scott said today.

Scott said he talked to a reporter from People magazine recently, but had no idea the case would be featured on the cover. He said he reporter saw the Baum case when it was featured on Oprah last month. Oprah narrated a minute-long segment about the Baum case, according to a clip found on YouTube.

Scott said every bit of media exposure helps. Most of the local network affiliates ran short stories on Baum being featured in People Thursday night.

People magazine, known mainly for celebrity news and gossip, has a circulation of roughly 3.5 million, according to a recent New York Times article.

The brown-haired 4-foot-9 girl was wearing a light blue hooded shirt and blue jeans when she went missing. Authorities believe she is the victim of an abduction.

Anyone with any information about the whereabouts of Lindsey Baum is encouraged to come forward with tips. Tips can be made by phone at 1-866-915-8299 or e-mail at soadmin@co.grays-harbor.wa.us. They may also be mailed to PO Box 305 McCleary, 98557.

OLYMPIA, Wash. - Relatives of Lindsey Baum, the McCleary 10-year-old girl who vanished in June, called Olympia police last month to report a stranger in their backyard.

The homeowner said the man was crouching beneath the bedroom window of Baum's two female cousins, who are 9 and 12 years old.

Olympia Police said any connection between the two cases is coincidental, but Grays Harbor County investigators have been in touch with Olympia Detectives about the Nov. 13 incident.

Investigators in the Baum case have not identified any suspects in the girl's disappearance.

"It's scary," said Derric, the father of the girls who did not want his last name published. Derric said he and his wife were already nervous about their kids' safety after what happened to his niece.

"It even makes you more cautious about your own children," said Derric.

Olympia police have released a sketch of the suspect from the case in the backyard break-in. Detectives said the man may be responsible for two attempted luring cases in Olympia in November.

On Nov. 10, about eight blocks from the house where the man was seen, a man approached a 10-year-old girl and asked if she needed a ride. She ran home and police were contacted.

On November 24, about two miles from the home, a 9-year-old girl said a stranger asked her if she could help him load groceries into her car. She said no and ran away.

In both incidents, the man was reportedly driving a silver car.

Detectives said the girls did not think the man in the sketch released by police was the man that approached them, but police said it's possible he could be responsible for all three incidents.

When Derric confronted the man in his backyard , he asked what the man was doing. Derric said the man told him he was a building inspector. Derric said when he asked the man for his I.D., the man walked quickly to his car, and drove off. Derric told police the man was driving a silver Mazda.

Grays Harbor investigators plan to call in new experts as the family of 11-year-old Lindsey Baum prepares to spend its first Christmas without the missing girl almost six months after she vanished from a McCleary street.

Undersheriff Rick Scott announced in a news conference Tuesday that additional missing child experts are expected to review the investigation in the coming weeks as detectives seek any new approaches, evidence or possibilities in the disappearance.

“I don’t think that anyone in this room thought that we’d still be here doing this six months later, but we are,” Scott said with the anniversary approaching on Saturday. “We are far from being done. My detectives ... are not done by a long shot.”

Full-time investigators continue to comb through nearly 1,200 tips in the case with help from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Scott pledged to devote as many resources to the search as possible for as long as it takes.

“Our department remains confident that we will bring this case to closure,” he said, “and that we will bring Lindsey home.”

The girl disappeared on June 26 while walking the short distance home from playing with her friend Michaela. Despite sightings of Lindsey along the way, she never made it home and investigators have found no evidence explaining her disappearance.

Michaela’s mother, Kara Kampen, sat nearby as her daughter cried into her shoulder.

“It’s Christmas time, a time that friends and family usually spend together,” Kampen said in a rare public statement. “This Christmas is not like that for everyone. Lindsey’s not home. Her family doesn’t get to spend this holiday with her.”

With tears streaming down Michaela’s face, Kampen pleaded with anyone with information to come forward to authorities. She asked them to call anonymously or send an e-mail regarding anything suspicious.

“It doesn’t have to be a huge piece of information. Any little bit counts,” she said. “It could be what brings Lindsey home where she needs to be now.”

Kampen said Lindsey has already missed her 11th birthday, Thanksgiving and other holidays and deserves to come home.

“For her sake, for her family’s sake, for her friend’s sake, (please call),” she said. “The days aren’t getting any easier.”

With wet eyes, Melissa Baum offered one comment.

“I just want Lindsey home,” she said.

Scott said he hopes the third-party review of the investigation by additional federal experts will help narrow some direction for the case, which has suffered from very little physical evidence indicating any specific crime or scenario.

Forensic testing has not tied any physical evidence to Baum so far, Scott said, but many items are still at the crime lab awaiting testing.

“The investigation remains comprehensive,” he said. “At some point we hope to have that one piece of information that’s going to point us in a specific direction.”

Lindsey Baum is 4-foot-9 with brown hair and brown eyes. She was wearing a blue hooded shirt and jeans when she disappeared. Scott said a $10,000 reward is available for information leading to her return.

The Grays Harbor County sheriff's office says deputies started serving search warrants Friday in the McCleary area in the search for a missing 11-year-old girl.

Sgt. Steve Shumate told KXRO more warrants would be served through the weekend in an operation involving the FBI and the King County sheriff's office.

Shumate says investigators have been following leads and conducting interviews that identified areas that may contain information about the disappearance of Lindsey Baum. She disappeared the night of June 26 while walking home from a friend's house.

McCLEARY — The search for 11-year-old Lindsey Baum who disappeared in June while walking to her home in McCleary, has affected her community in many ways.

One of those ways has been financial. The search for her has had a major financial impact on the Grays Harbor County Sheriff’s Office and the McCleary Police Department.

Despite tighter-than-ever budgets, officials at the city and county are staying focused on finding her and aren’t looking only at the bottom line.

“We just concentrate on what we have to do and not the dollar figure,” said George Crumb, the chief of police in McCleary.

The bulk of the costs have been borne by the county Sheriff’s Office.

Anywhere from two to five officers are working on the case full-time, said Grays Harbor Undersheriff Rick Scott. He estimates the cost is “well into six figures,” including staff pay and benefits, Scott said.

The Sheriff’s Office tracked costs of the investigation initially, but because it will not be seeking outside funding for the case, it stopped bothering, Scott said. “You cannot put a price on investigations. I don’t even think about the money end of it.”

Scott said he had to ramp up his resources for the case and use all tools available.

To keep costs down, Scott said staff adjusted their days off and overtime and asked the other agencies like the city of McCleary and the FBI to help out whenever possible.

Despite the ratcheted down efforts today compared to last summer, costs for the case will rise again soon. Scott said the FBI team will be focusing on the case over the next couple of months, which will require more officers for that period of time to follow up on leads, in addition to the two detectives currently working the case full-time.

“When that happens, it’s going to get expensive again,” he said. “I’m merely trying to do things as frugally as possible and as effectively as necessary.”

As for next year, the Sheriff’s Office has got a lot on its plate with the Baum investigation with less money to spend.

“We were not able to budget anything extra for this case (because we) cut our budget significantly,” Scott said.

With 10 percent of his budget eliminated, Scott said he will simply continue to investigate the case the best he can in 2010.

Impact on McCleary

Although the city of McCleary spent less on the investigation compared to the county, the high costs of the search strained the police department’s modest budget.

The McCleary Police Department budgeted $35,000 for overtime for four officers in 2009. The Baum case, which began when she disappeared June 26, cost an additional $8,000 in officer overtime checking on leads and searching areas, Crumb said.

“We just needed personnel to stay extra time, as did the county and other (agencies),” he said.

Unexpected costs also came from vehicle fuel and maintenance from officers’ extra time in patrol cars and from printing up fliers to blanket the county.

“That was quite a challenge to keep the fliers going,” Crumb said. “It was just one expense that hit the city.”

To come in under a budget of $376,000 at the end of 2009, Crumb said the department didn’t purchase items such as new office equipment and tried to drive the patrol cars less.

The department had budget issues before the Baum investigation began. Crumb said the department needs five officers to have 24-hour service in the city, but cannot fill the fifth position because the money isn’t in the budget.

For next year, despite knowing Baum is still not found, overtime has been budgeted again at $35,000.

The slower pace of the investigation has taken some budget pressure off, the chief said. “It’s still ongoing, but it’s definitely downsized.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~MCCLEARY, Wash. - Nine months after 10-year-old Lindsey Baum vanished without a trace, FBI agents returned to the family home Friday to conduct a new search.

There is no new evidence or new tips that brought the FBI to the home where Lindsey was living before her nationally publicized disappearance last June.

Rather, investigators want to take a last chance to gather material from the home before Lindsey's mother, Melissa Baum, moves out of McCleary for good.

Grays Harbor County Undersheriff Rick Scott said Lindsey's room has been preserved untouched in the home since the evening of June 26, when she vanished while walking home from a friend's home.

Now that Lindsey's mother is moving in with relatives in Thurston County, investigators want to take this last opportunity to gather fibers, hair samples and other evidence from the home.

"An outside review of the investigation into the disappearance suggested another review of the home be made by CSI specialists, and the FBI team was available today," Undersheriff Scott told KOMO News.

He said the home has been searched at least three times before. This time, forensics experts will be taking samples of carpet, furniture, hair strands, materials in the family car and anything else that might help them if that type of evidence is ever needed.

"In the sad eventuality that her remains were found, detectives would have controlled samples to eliminate any trace evidence which might have come from the home rather than from any other source," Scott said.

Scott said there are no suspects at this time, and nothing should be read into Friday's search other than that the landlord may want to recarpet and repaint and make other changes to the house when Lindsey's mother moves.

So this is investigators' last chance to conduct a search before the home is refurbished.

The undersheriff said that Melissa Baum quit her job after her daughter disappeared to take part in the searches, which continued for several months, and now the mother needs to move because of strained finances.

A $20,000 reward has been offered for information leading to the discovery of Lindsey Baum.

Lindsey was 10 years old when she vanished; now she'd be 11, and her family is holding out hope that someone will come forward with information.

Investigators have received hundreds of tips, but no substantial leads. Volunteer searches have turned up nothing but frustration.

Over the last six months, Lindsey's mother and the police chief appeared on a national TV programs to urge anyone with information to call investigators, and Lindsey was even featured on the cover of People Magazine.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~FBI Searches Home Of Missing McCleary Girl Before Family Moves

Posted: 3:23 pm PST February 26, 2010

MCCLEARY, Wash. -- The FBI is searching the home of a missing McCleary girl one last time before her family moves out.

Lindsey Baum’s family is moving to Rainier and Grays Harbor County Undersheriff Rick Scott said it’s the last chance to obtain samples of the old house before someone new moves in.

Baum was last seen June 26 when she disappeared while walking home from a friend's house. Two people spotted the then 10-year-old along the way, but she never made it home and investigators have found no evidence that could explain her disappearance

Scott said Friday's search was planned and is part of the FBI's review of the county's investigation.

Investigators are taking samples of carpet and other items inside the home to put into an evidence library in case they are ever needed for comparison. They are also doing a final search of Lindsey’s room which hasn’t been touched since she vanished, Scott said.

Samples are also being collected from Melissa Baum’s car, Lindsey’s mother, for possible future use.

Scott said the search and collecting samples are routine and that there are no new tips or information in the case.

Federal and local authorities launched a new push for clues in the disappearance of 11-year-old Lindsey Baum on Monday as teams of investigators returned to the McCleary street where she was last seen.

Like door-to-door salesmen in blue windbreakers, FBI agents and local officers spent the day systematically knocking on the doors along Maple Street, greeting many residents with questions that had been asked before.

Grays Harbor Undersheriff Rick Scott said detectives and federal agents intend to re-question many people along the neighborhood street as part of a larger review of the investigation.

“We’re not plowing any new ground,” Scott said. “We’re just going over what we’ve already done.”

Investigators are following new recommendations from the FBI Child Abduction Rapid Deployment team, which specializes in kidnapping cases across the country. Scott said the FBI team has been advising detectives since the beginning of the search, but its experts recently finished a third-party review of the investigation and offered suggestions on new approaches and follow-up interviews.

“Today was sort of the kick-off,” Scott said, later adding, “These are the techniques and these are the recommendations that have been successful (in other cases).”

Lindsey Baum went missing on June 26 while walking a short distance back home along Maple Street. She was sighted twice along the way, but investigators have found no evidence explaining how she disappeared. It was just days before her 11th birthday.

“It’s as comprehensive today as it was on June 26,” Scott said Monday, explaining that without specific evidence they must continue investigating all possibilities.

Forensic experts also conducted a final search of Lindsey’s house Friday to follow up on one of the review recommendations before her mother moved out of the area.

FBI agents teamed up with local officers from several departments Monday to make the door-to-door interviews. Scott said departments from Aberdeen, McCleary, Montesano, Lacey, Thurston County, Mason County, the State Patrol and others volunteered officers to help in the effort.

A couple dozen officers combed through the streets, stopping to chat with homeowners. Police cruisers crowded the main roads.

Scott said investigators have prioritized the expert recommendations and hope to keep the extra officers around for several days to complete the new round of interviews.

“We want to do it until it’s done,” he said.

The FBI brought in profilers, psychologists, computer technicians and many others to work on the case, Scott said. They also provided a mobile command center to serve as a clearinghouse for any information collected.

“There’s a lot of resources the FBI can bring to the table,” he said.

Some residents invited investigators inside. Others hung in the doorways as answering questions, the sessions lasting minutes or hours.

Scott said the federal review found the initial investigation very thorough, but they want to go back and see if they can turn up anything new, any small detail that might break the case.

“There’s a method to the madness,” he said. “We need the public’s understanding.”

He asked McCleary residents to continue the cooperation and support they have always offered investigators throughout the past eight months.

Standing outside his mother’s Maple Street home, David Belcher said investigators spent about three hours Monday morning interviewing him and the others at the house.

“They were really polite,” he said. “Whatever it takes, as long as they find out who did this.”

Though he lives in Central Park, Belcher said he often visits his mother and aunt in McCleary to help them around the house. It was the second time he had been interviewed for the case.

“(This time was) more thorough,” he said. “They really spent a lot more time on it.”

“Somebody had to have seen something,” he added.

Scott said some residents have questioned the redundancy of the second, or in some cases third or fourth, interviews. But he said few were caught off guard or upset.

“The community kind of knew something was going to happen,” he said. “Now they’re seeing what they heard was coming.”

Scott said investigators hope to build some momentum over the next several days and have plans in place to follow up on any potential break-throughs in the case.

“We’re going to go at this for as long as it takes,” he said.http://**/articles/2010/03/02/local_news/doc4b8d73a0ad350595677110.txt